[Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) by James Gillespie Blaine]@TWC D-Link bookTwenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) CHAPTER VIII 24/61
Had the Democracy presented Douglas and Breckinridge as their National nominees, they would have combined all the elements of strength in their party. But passion and prejudice prevented.
The South was implacable toward Douglas, and deliberately resolved to accept defeat rather than secure a victory under his lead. DISRUPTION OF THE DEMOCRACY. The disruption of the Democracy was undoubtedly hastened by the political events which had occurred since the adjournment at Charleston.
An organization, styling itself the Constitutional- Union Party, representing the successors of the Old Whigs and Americans, had met in Baltimore, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President. The strength of the party was in the South.
In the slave States it formed the only opposition to the Democratic party, and was as firm in defense of the rights of the slave-holder as its rival. Its members had not been so ready to repeal the Missouri Compromise as the Democrats, and they were unrelenting in their hostility to Douglas, and severe in their exposure of his dogma of popular sovereignty.
They had effectively aided in bringing both the doctrine and its author into disrepute in the South, and, if the Democrats had ventured to nominate Douglas, they had their weapons ready for vigorous warfare against him. With a Southern slave-holder like Mr.Bell at the head of the ticket, and a Northern man of Mr.Everett's well-known conservatism associated with him, the Constitutional-Union Party was in a position to make a strong canvass against Douglas in the South.
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